The short, hard laugh with which he said this troubled me still more.

“Speak out,” I said—­“for Heaven’s sake, speak out!  You have something on your mind—­what is it?”

“I have something on my hands,” he replied, gloomily.  “Work.  Work that must be done quickly, or there will be no peace for any of us.  Look here, Damon—­if you had a wife, and another man stood before the world as her betrothed husband—­if you had a wife, and another man spoke of her as his—­boasted of her—­behaved in the house as if it were already his own—­treated her servants as though he were their master—­possessed himself of her papers—­extorted money from her—­brought his friends, on one pretext or another, about her house—­tormented her, day after day, to marry him ... what would you do to such a man as this?”

“Make my own marriage public at once, and set him at defiance,” I replied.

“Ay, but....”

“But what?”

“That alone will not content me.  I must punish him with my own hand.”

“He would be punished enough in the loss of the lady and her fortune.”

“Not he!  He has entangled her affairs sufficiently by this time to indemnify himself for her fortune, depend on it.  And as for herself—­pshaw! he does not know what love is!”

“But his pride——­”

“But my pride!” interrupted Dalrymple, passionately.  “What of my pride?—­my wounded honor?—­my outraged love?  No, no, I tell you, it is not such a paltry vengeance that will satisfy me!  Would to Heaven I had trusted only my own arm from the first!  Would to Heaven that, instead of having anything to say to the cursed brood of the law, I had taken the viper by the throat, and brought him to my own terms, after my own fashion!”

“But you have not yet told me what you are doing here?”

“I am waiting to see Monsieur de Simoncourt.”

“Monsieur de Simoncourt!”

“Yes.  That white house at the corner is one of his haunts,—­a private gaming-house, never open till after midnight.  I want to meet him accidentally, as he is going in.”

“What for?”

“That he may take me with him.  You can’t get into one of these places without an introduction, you know.  Those who keep them are too much afraid of the police.”

“But do you play?”

“Come with me, and see.  Hark! do you hear nothing?”

“Yes, I hear a footstep.  And here comes a man.”

“Let us walk to meet him, accidentally, and seem to be talking.”

I took Dalrymple’s arm, and we strolled in the direction of the new comer.  It was not De Simoncourt, however, but a tall man with a grizzled beard, who crossed over, apprehensively, at our approach, but recrossed and went into the white house at the corner as soon as he thought us out of sight.

“One of the gang,” said Dalrymple, with a shrug of his broad shoulders.  “We had better go back to our doorway, and wait till the right man comes.”